Is it just me or does assassination rogue not feel like it fulfills it’s fantasy? An assassin wants to get in, kill his target as fast as possible, and then get out without leaving a trace of evidence. These bleeds and slower paced gameplay feels like the exact opposite of what an assassin does. Sure there are some assassins operate this way, but I think it’s in the minority. It feels like the assassination rogue is more of a torturer or some serial killer. The poisons I think make sense. But the bleeding? Not really. The slow apm, not really either. But maybe I’m alone in these thoughts.
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I feel the same, it always felt like assassin should have been the big burst spec for rogue. IMO subtlety would have made way more sense as the poison/bleed spec just from the fantasy of your opponent realizing whats going on just when its too late.
But now we are far too deep into the rabbit hole, where sub has been the burst spec and sin the dot spec, since vanilla.
I personally wouldn’t mind seeing assassin reworked to have some burst though, in particular I always wanted it to have an execute baseline. We finally got a talent for it in BfA, but it was never able to compare to its other options, though we will see how SL works out with its reworked ambush procs. But seriously, of any spec in the game, the one you would think that could execute a low hp target would be assassin!
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I always thought that assassination and subtlety should swap names. Slow death by poison is much more subtle and the get in, kill, get out theme is more befitting of the assassination title imo.
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Pretty sure it’s fulfilling that fantasy. Well, to be honest… corruptions are fulfilling that fantasy. 
If you don’t like slow bleeds, use exsang. That is what I’m using here. The burst can be kind of ridiculous with gushing wounds on top.
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Agreed swap sub and sin names
Tbh, they could have done the rework in Legion or even for Shadowlands. Idk, I just think this slow. I know we have expedient corruptions to kind of fulfill the fantasy a bit, but the problem lies in after all of that goes away.
It’s cuz in classic the assassination tree was more of the crit/eviscerate talents and subtlety was more about control and stealth abilities (also have the hemorrhage bleed in the tree). Over time when they split them as we see now it all got jumbled I guess
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Agree. As others have said it made sense in Vanilla.
I went the classic 30/8/13 spec and never felt more like an assassin back then. With remorseless I’d have 100% crit on both ambush and backstab…cold blood…improved poisons…improved kidney…man it was a time to play rogue that’s for sure.
Never really liked Sub…really ever. But Shadowlands may be the time I make the switch as it’s really starting to look like it will finally overtake Sin for the feel I want.
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Sub does look good from what I see. I just hope they don’t nerf it into the ground because of one niche fight where they do so much damage. *cough Zul cough
You are correct , its a i think , a personal opinion about it . Assassination in this game is based around the slower way of assassinating someone . Not saying it should stay or be changed .
Just that while you may think bleed , slow apm dont make senses , that in your idea of assassination and not what the game itself envisioned it to be .
Yeah I totally get that. To me the idea just seems so foreign to me. But the devs and other players may see it in a different way.
Apply a paralytic poison, slice open a vein and sneak away, leaving your target to bleed out
I don’t mind the DoTs, but I do agree with other posters here that perhaps a name swap is in order, or atleast tune up Assassination so that we have some burst damage for our DoTs to work off of.
I agree that the name swap makes sense, but it seems like such a minor complaint IMO that if Blizzard fixed would have other people rioting for the standard forum reasons.
I’ve always considered Assassination’s slower gameplay/pooling to be more methodical- about being patient choosing the right moment rather than just throwing everything you have at something willy-nilly.
I mean I guess that works. They can’t just outright do whatever because it may end up foiling the plan to assassinate. Still, I guess I just have an issue on how they implemented the spec. It just doesn’t feel right.
That’s just your idea of an Assassin, plenty examples of assassinations in history that took many days or over a week to kill the target, the goal is to eliminate yourself of any suspicion so you can leave the city or country without looking like a culprit.
These kills were often done using radioactive material or just straight up poison. I believe they wen’t the DoT route for the class because Subtlety already fulfilled the burst DPS spec and it is still the only melee class that focuses on DoTs.
The spec has had a similar feel, with variations depending on expansion, since at least Wrath.
Assassination is currently just wotlk feral druid that is unable to leave cat form.
Rake, mangle, mangle, rip, mangle, mangle, mangle, ferocious bite, repeat.
It’s super, super weird.
Before, assassination was about finishers (imp evi, imp snd, imp expose armor, cb evi) and getting finishers faster (relentless, ruthless, and seal fate).
To be honest, Sub’s current mastery would make WAY more sense for assassination.
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Yeah sub used to be the bleed class. Then they decided to completely ruin sub.